Page 10 of The Neverfear

‘I can’t!’ Nighthand hissed back. ‘I need the right moment. Music, fireworks, shooting stars!’

‘Pish,’ said Ratwin. ‘Don’t waits too long. Professors Vane at the parties was making distinctive eyeses at her.’

‘He’s a hundred and seven!’

‘Evens so.’

Anya was waiting in the greenhouse with her father and Jacques, a gagana bird on each shoulder.

She grinned at Christopher. ‘Morning. You look like you got run over by a cart.’

‘You can talk – you’ve got toast in your ear.’

‘Koo wedged it there,’ she said. ‘For later.’

‘Nice. Sensible.’

She fished it out. ‘Want it?’ Koo snatched it up and swallowed it, and Christopher laughed as Nighthand, Ratwin and Irian came in.

‘The time has come to fortify the islet,’ said Nighthand. ‘When Vigo Nex gives you a warning, you take notice. We must protect ourselves and the creatures.’

‘How though?’ said Christopher.

‘Vigo’s story wasn’t the first we heard of this, although it was the most worrying,’ said Irian. ‘I’ve been hearing troubling rumours from the nereids for weeks. Argus has been preparing a defence.’

‘A case of the justs in cases,’ said Ratwin.

Anya’s father smiled. He had gladly given up the throne of Dousha to spend his days outside among green things. He gestured to the rows and rows of flowerpots. ‘This is fendthorn. As you see, it looks like an ordinary wild rose, but each bloom has thirteen petals, and the tendrils grow thirty feet long. If you make a circle of the plants and entwine the tendrils, nothing can break through it from outside. Nothing can fly over it or burrow under it. It forms a shield of glimourie, deep into the earth and into the sky above.’

‘Like barbed wire?’ said Christopher.

‘Far better!’ said Anya. ‘Show him, Father.’

‘Not in here,’ said Argus. ‘It’ll smash the place to pieces.’

They set a pot on the lawn outside, and Argus looped the long green tendril around himself so that it formed a circle on the ground.

‘Try to touch me.’

Christopher reached out to touch Argus, and the sky exploded. Red sparks erupted fifty feet high and the air was full of the whizz and crackling of fireworks.

‘Ow!’ The pain was vicious. His heart was racing at a hundred beats a second. ‘Bloody hell! You could have told me—’

Anya laughed. ‘That it was going to feel like being stabbed by a thousand fiery daggers? I know!’

Irian turned over Christopher’s hand. ‘Unmarked,’ she said. ‘Any pain?’

‘No. It’s completely gone. I do admit,’ he said grudgingly, ‘that’s amazing.’

Nighthand looked with pleasure at the rows of fendthorn in Argus’s greenhouse. ‘Miraculous, really. Smells like heaven and hurts like hell. Completely impenetrable. They used it once as an obstacle in the Race of Thieves; three people had their noses singed off, so they didn’t do it again. Happy days.’

‘But if we put them all around the edge of the island,’ said Christopher, ‘and no one can get through it, how will we come and go? Won’t we be locked in?’

‘That’s what’s so miraculous,’ said Argus. ‘Each fendthorn has tiny green filaments that read the skin of those who touch them; they know who planted them. And the planter – that’s me – can give you a key.’ Argus took Christopher’s thumb and pressed it into one of the thorns. ‘There. Now you can come and go, and you too are a keyholder: you can let others in. Try to touch me now.’

Very reluctantly, given the prickling in his skin, Christopher reached out towards Argus; this time there were no red sparks.

‘And you’re going to put these all around Glimt?’ said Anya.